1 Boring Old Man

Long ago [in the late 1970’s I believe] I was asked to review the records of a case from our State Prison system. An inmate in her mid-twenties had been put in solitary confinement in an out-building made of tin. It was mid-summer and she had died from a heat stroke. I’d already read about the case in the papers – presented as an expose` of prisoner abuse. Why was a Psychiatrist asked to review the case? I wondered myself, until I saw her records.

She was mentally ill from childhood with severe attachment problems. She absolutely could not tolerate being alone. She had worn out her parents and an army of therapists with her neediness. As a young adult, she would become involved with a man, then demand constant companionship. How does that get you to prison? A former boyfriend had moved into a locked, guarded apartment – the penthouse – to get away from her. She somehow found a way to appear at his door over and over. The thing that finally got her sent to prison was being prosecuted by the telephone company for telephone abusing him. A judge who had tried everything to get her to stop had finally sentenced her to jail-time after repeated warnings.

One might have thought that she would do well in prison, since there was always someone around – but that wasn’t the case. At lights out time in her cell, she would begin to scream. The treatment for bad behavior in prison is isolation, where she would scream. She was finally put in the "out building" because that was the only place far enough away where she didn’t keep everyone awake. There, she died in the heat. People had tried to modify her behavior for her whole life – but it never worked.

The arguments against Iraq were obvious. Saddam Hussein had gone to War with Iran. He’d invaded Kuwait. He’d used chemical weapons on his own people. He was, at one point, trying to develop nuclear weapons. He was a leader who tortured and murdered his enemies. He had defied repeated attempts by the United Nations to rein in his dangerousness to the rest of the world. No one, including his neighbors, disagreed that he was a tyrant. If he had friends in the world of nations, I don’t know who they were. When he invaded Kuwait in 1991, the United Nations approved the use of force against him  [UNSCR 678] – resulting in the first Gulf War. A later UN action [UNSCR 687] declared a cease fire pending Iraq’s agreement to certain conditions. From UNSCR 678 in 1990 to UNSCR 1441 in 2002, there were 50 UN Resolutions about Iraq. I found a catalog of them and reformatted it [It’s actually worth looking over]. The point? Saddam Hussein was a monumental pain in the ass to his people, his neighbors, and the world. People had tried to modify his behavior for his whole reign – but it never worked.

I don’t know what came of the guards who had been involved with isolating the prisoner.  I felt for them years later when I saw a similar case and ultimately had to go through the courts to keep her from appearing at my front door, scaring my child. My point is that as I listen to Tony Blair, George W. Bush, or Dick Cheney talk about Saddam Hussein, they always talk about how Hussein acted, how he defied every sanction, broke every rule, how he required constant vigilance. They seem to think that we don’t get it that there was no plan that could be devised that would force him to act reasonably. We know that and we’re not arguing with them about that. In fact, I would even agree with them that the only realistic choices were constant vigilance until the end of time or some type of military action – maybe even ultimately leading to "regime change."

In the dilemma of the prison guards with the patient I described, we really understand the problem, but would hardly suggest that passively executing her by letting her to die from heat stroke as a solution. At the least, they lost their jobs. I never found out whether or not they ended up being prosecuted. Had they gone to court, it’s likely they would’ve been found guilty of criminal negligence or manslaughter. They tried to handle a situation that was beyond them, and acted out of frustration. There was nothing right for them to do, but given the circumstances, it should’ve been decided by the prison authorities who would have likely transferred her to a mental facility.

And so to Bush, Cheney, or Blair. In the case of the US, we can levy all sorts of charges against Bush and Cheney – going after foreign oil rights, imperialism, lust for power – there’s a long list. With Blair, the charge is "poodle-ism," wanting to run with the big dogs, something like that. Those are charges about their motivations. They say they were trying to keep us safe. But that’s not how the law works. In both the United States and Great Britain, they perverted the law because they were frustrated. Why they did it is actually immaterial – that they did it is what matters.

I’d bet that the guards were never prosecuted. They were probably quietly let off the hook and sent on their way.  But I don’t know that for sure. That’s what seems to be trying to happen with Bush, Cheney, and Blair. They played with the Rule of Law, jury-rigged things, because at the least they were frustrated with Saddam Hussein. While I expect there were other motives, I’m putting them aside for the moment. The pseudo-legal memos of John Yoo and the folksy logic of Lord Goldsmith were used as excuses. But in the end, it was the big guys who did the deed, signed the orders, lead the charge.